The signification of a formal definition is identical to that of the name itself. This is the position of those who reason correctly, for they maintain that a definition merely sets out in detail what the name conveys in a general way. Accordingly, all rational people concur that a mere name does not form an image of the thing named for someone who had no prior conception of it; the name simply points to the object and directs one’s attention toward it.

For this reason they state that the purpose of languages is not the indication of a single word to its meaning. A lone word’s denotation cannot be known unless one is aware that it was coined for that meaning, and that cannot be known until both the word and the meaning have already been conceived. If the purpose of linguistic convention were to secure the meanings of isolated words, a vicious circle would ensue.

Since the aim of names is not to depict their individual meanings, and since a definition signifies in the same manner as a name, the aim of a definition is likewise not to portray its isolated meaning. Because a name indicates its referent only after the referent has first been conceived, the definition’s indication of the thing defined must likewise be preceded by a conception of that thing. And as both the defined object and the named object can be conceived without either the name or the definition—and as that prior conception is common to both forms of indication—it is impossible to grasp the realities being defined by definitions alone, just as it is impossible to grasp the realities being named by names alone. This is precisely what was to be shown.

Hence it is universally accepted among all peoples that meaningful speech exists only in a complete sentence, whether composed of two nouns or of a verb and a noun.

The logicians themselves acknowledge this. They divide utterances into noun (ism), “word” (kalima), and particle (harf), which they label an “instrument.” By “word” they mean what the grammarians call a “verb.” Yet in spite of this they contradict themselves, for they classify as a particle—according to their own terminology—what the grammarians treat as a noun. The pronouns, whether nominative, accusative, or genitive, whether attached or detached, as in the phrases ra’aytuhu (“I saw him”) and marra bī (“he passed by me”), are nouns; grammarians call them “hidden nouns.” The logicians, however, claim that in Greek they fall under the category of particles and dub them “khawālif,” as though they